Here comes the era of Big Data

I recently spent a week in the company of some seriously intelligent people, and came away with a clear message: Big Data is going to change everything.

Image courtesy Teradata

The occasion was the annual gathering of Teradata users, held this year in sunny San Diego. Teradata makes massive data warehouses that sit at the heart of large organisations and become a central repository for important information - they're consuming Big Data.

The software engineers I rubbed shoulders with during the event are responsible for making sure these giant digital vats not only store the masses of information poured into them, but also analyse and present it in useful ways.

And that's no easy feat. Some of the larger data warehouses contain petabytes (A petabyte is a thousand terabytes) of information. To put that into some context, if a single MP3 music file was a petabyte in size, it would play for 32 years.

Throughout the world, these massive digital warehouses are filling with everything from customer and supplier information to data gleaned from RFID tags, sensor networks and social media sites.

Every time you shop at a supermarket, book a plane ticket, access a bank account or post a comment to a web site, chances are details will end up inside a data warehouse somewhere on the planet.

Those organisations best able to make use of these vast pools of data stand to gain a significant competitive advantage. If you can spot a trend or opportunity before your competitor, you're off to a flying start.

But doing this effectively requires some serious tools. They're needed to sift through the data to find hidden linkages that might be important. Think digital needles in digital haystacks.

It's in this area of analysis that some of the most exciting development is taking place. The kind of tools that will appear during the next few years will allow organisations to achieve things that are currently impossible.

Highly personalised marketing campaigns will take on a whole new dimension. Products will be tailored for specific segments and public infrastructures will be able to be designed to better serve populations.

At the conference there was a lot of talk about the challenges of 'Big Data'. There's already talk that petabyte-sized warehouses will soon be replaced by exabyte-sized versions. An exabyte is 1000 petabytes.

Analysing those sorts of quantities poses new challenges, but the software boffins are not shying away.

They're excited by the era of Big Data and what it will mean for the world of business. Are you?

Why don't we like making video calls?

We can do it from mobile phones, desktop PCs and notebooks, yet video calling has never really caught on as a business tool. Why is this?

In their early days, video calls required a deal of technical know-how and an annoying array of extra gear and cables. You also had to have someone on the other end who knew what they were doing.

But advances in technology now means things have become a whole lot easier. If a camera is not already embedded in your computing device, it's as simple as plugging one in and you're good to go.

At the same time, calling services have evolved in leaps and bounds. Offerings from the likes of Skype and Google make conducting two-way video calls as simple as the voice-only variety.

The other big advantage is that these calls can be made for free. This means the old cost roadblock has been well and truly shoved out of the way.

Yet, despite all this, the number of business communications that take place via video calls remains puzzling low. Why exactly is this?

It's not as though video doesn't bring benefits. Being able to see someone as your talking with them adds significantly to the quality of the communication. Gestures and facial expressions can allow subtleties to be expressed that simply get lost in a regular phone call.

Used well, video calls can also reduce the need for face-to-face meetings, thereby having a positive impact on business travel costs.

So, with these obvious benefits there for the taking, why exactly aren't we making more business video calls?

Microsoft buying Adobe? It makes sense.

Recent reports that Microsoft is planning to open its sizable wallet and purchase Adobe took many in the industry by surprise, but it actually makes a lot of sense.

According to a report in the New York Times, Steve Ballmer recently met with Adobe head Shantanu Narayen. While no one is confirming anything, the paper's sources say that a potential purchase was discussed.

Such a union would make a lot of sense for Microsoft as it continues to battle an ever-rising Apple in the mobile devices space.

Microsoft recently launched its Windows Phone 7 software (As outlined by by Hydrapinion colleague Alex Kidman) but has a long way to go to claw back share of the market.

Having a close tie with Adobe would help with this. Apple has declared war on Flash, despite it being used by a large number of web sites, and tying it tightly into Windows Phone 7 might encourage people to make the switch. What effect this would have on Microsoft's own Silverlight technology, which competes with Flash, is not clear.

The buy would also give Microsoft a massive boost in the application software market, again giving it the potential to take share away from Apple.

The technology industry is the scene for regular large-scale purchases, and so a Microsoft-Adobe merger would follow the trend of continued consolidation.

Twittering away our productivity

Every so often, a new tech offering comes along that can do nothing but lower office productivity. I tender the latest exhibit, from printer giant Lexmark.

It would appear that the good folk at Lexmark have deemed it a great idea to incorporate access to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook directly from office printers.

Rather than needing to fire up a browser on a PC to check the latest witty posts from family and friends, social networking junkies can instead read them on the the small colour screen on the front of their printer.

Is it just me or does that rank as the dumbest idea of the week?

Of course, Lexmark talks it up as a real benefit. The company says that, rather than tying up a computer screen which should be being used for actual work, people can simply turn to their printer to stay in touch.

Sounds like a strange argument to me. While I recognise that social networking can play a small role in office life, the vast majority of its impact is wasted time and reduced productivity.

Moving things from a PC screen to a printer screen is going to make no difference to this fact.

So, are you excited about the prospect of Twittering or Facebooking on your printer? Or should workers be using business equipment to do something more worthwhile?

The humble business card just won't die

I find it interesting that technology has revolutionised most aspects of working life apart from one - the business card.

We still carry them and routinely hand them out as a means of formal introduction.

But it's not as though there haven't been any attempts to bring business cards into the digital age.

Back in the days of the PDA it was possible to 'beam' your details from your device to that of the person you'd just met. It was a novelty, but never really caught on.

These days there are a number of smartphone apps that try to do a similar thing. One of the most notable, called Bump, allows details to be shared between a pair of iPhones simply by bumping them together. It's pretty cool, but I can't quite see it setting the corporate world on fire.

Then there are online options. One just about to be launched is called about.me.

It provides users with a single splash page on which they can have a photo and a selection of personal details. It's designed to be your business card on the web.

But despite such developments, I guarantee that the next business meeting you attend will involve the exchange of small, rectangular pieces of card with names and numbers on them.

Do you think we'll ever see the end of the business card? Somehow, I doubt it.

Ian Grayson has been a technology journalist for more than 15 years. A former IT editor of The Australian newspaper, he now runs his own freelance business, crafting stories for a range of publications and web sites. He is intrigued by the power that technology wields in the world of work - both for better and for worse - and in this blog offers insights into what it all might mean.Read more WORK